ARTICLES ABOUT BETTY BOOP BY DATE - PAGE 2

FRIDAY The Comas, at Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western Ave. $10. 773-276-3600. Released last fall, the Comas' "Conductor" (Yep Roc) has quietly become the latest in a long line of wonderful pop records shaped by shattered romances. In detailing his breakup with "Dawson's Creek" star Michelle Williams, smoggy-toned vocalist Andy Herod sings like a stranded cosmonaut adrift in a galaxy of fractured feelings and battered dreams. Herod's mates willingly testify on behalf of his pain, blackening his rainbow-chasing fantasies with ultra-catchy melodies, crescendos and fuzz-rock.

It was only a matter of time. Comedy Central has given the green light to TV's first animated "reality show," Variety reports. The former writers of "The Man Show," Matt Silverstein and Dave Jesser, will write and produce the series, called "Drawn Together," which combines elements of "Real World" and "Big Brother" by putting cartoon characters in typical reality TV situations: Think drinking, making out and back-stabbing. In a case of animation imitating life, cartoon characters from different genres and styles will live together under one roof.

Sally Kaye Rosemont, 87, a Chicago jazz musician and radio comedian promoted by one theater company in the 1920s as its "Boop-Boop-A-Doo Girl," died Saturday, Sept. 9, at St. Mary's Nursing Center in Leonardtown, Md. The cause was congestive heart failure, her son Franklin said. Mrs. Rosemont, born Salomea Janiak, grew up the daughter of Polish immigrants living in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood. At age 10 or 11, she began studying the accordion, and by 13 she was playing for cash prizes at amateur nights and touring the local speakeasies.

Taking license: World-famous ceramic artist Paul Cardew, noted for his zany, highly collectible limited-edition teapots and accessories, has acquired the license to introduce the timeless antics of the 1920s pixie-eyed cartoon pinup Betty Boop. Cardew also acquired the license from King Features earlier this year to depict Popeye, his girlfriend Olive Oyl and his arch rival Brutus in fine ceramic artistry. The ceramist is designing a set of four highly collectible teapots for the firm's Cardew Collectibles line, with each teapot featuring a distinctive three-dimensional image of the character's face.

LOS ANGELES -- I noted with great dismay the drawing of Betty Boop and article ["Trips, Tips & Deals"; May 14] identifying Grim Natwick as the creator of Betty Boop. It is a well documented fact that Betty Boop was created by my grandfather Max Fleischer. It is true that Mr. Natwick worked in the 1930s at my grandfather's studio, Fleischer Studios, as an animator and may have been involved in that capacity with the animation of the original Betty Boop cartoons, but in no manner did Mr. Natwick "create" the Betty Boop character.

Kino on Video's "Hollywood on Parade: The Paramount Comedy Shorts: 1928-1941" is a three-volume series of vintage one-reel comedies and entertaining faux newsreels that recall Hollywood's Golden Era. "Cavalcade of Comedy," "Studio Snapshots" and "Robert Benchley and the Knights of the Algonquin" are hit-and-miss compilations, but film buffs will thrill to these time-capsule glimpses of some of Hollywood's then-biggest stars; some, as the song...

Clear your calendar from 1 to 9 p.m. Saturday, March 14. Disconnect the phone, lock the door, put on your pajamas and make a few bowls of macaroni and cheese and several peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Then turn on the Cartoon Network, sit cross-legged on the floor six inches from the TV screen, and get lost with The 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time. The network's salute to the greatest cartoons, selected with input from more than 1,000 animation professionals, will include interviews with some of the most recognized names from the world of animation, including directors Chuck Jones and Joe Barbera, voice actors June Foray and Charlie Adler, background artist Maurice Noble and film critic Leonard Maltin.

Mae Questel, a rubber-voiced veteran of stage, screen and vaudeville who played Woody Allen's mother in the film "New York Stories" and was the cartoon voice of Betty Boop and Olive Oyl, has died. She was 89. Ms. Questel, who died last Sunday in her Manhattan home, was 17 and living in the South Bronx when she won a local contest to find the girl who most resembled Helen Kane, a popular singer known as the "boop-oop-a-doop queen." Ms. Questel was signed by an agent that night and soon was performing on the vaudeville circuit.

Squirrel Nut Zippers at Vic: Equal parts Frida Kahlo and Betty Boop, the Squirrel Nut Zippers' Katharine Whalen could've been sitting on any Mississippi porch front instead of in a chair on the Vic's stage Wednesday night. Swinging her legs and strumming a banjo, she sometimes danced gently by her microphone, crooning with a voice that should've been, but wasn't, coming out of a tinny pre-war radio. Her classy calm balanced the breakneck pace of the music and the cathartic dance riots of her husband, vocalist/trombonist/guitarist James Mathus.

Talk of changing Illinois law to let each county make its own definition of obscenity got me thinking about my own view of offensive material. The object of my personal crackdown, in the form of avoiding it like the plague: The casual depiction of leering at voluptuous women in children's movies. You can run from Jim Carrey, but you can't hide from girl-ogling. Take the otherwise pleasant "Space Jam." You and your children are innocently watching Michael Jordan undertake a basketball romp through Warner Brothers cartoonland, when in walks the movie's only female cartoon character.